在我所在的芝加哥南区社区，过多的居民，尤其是孩子们，害怕警察。他们被教导说，警察不是他们的朋友，警员可能会开枪打他们，因为他们是黑人而逮捕他们，而且警察是他们的敌人。我不相信其中任何一句，我一直努力纠正这些误解，因为这些误解可能会导致致命后果。
In my neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, too many of our residents, especially the children, fear the police. They have been taught that the police are not their friends, that officers might shoot them, arrest them for being Black, and that they are their enemies. I do not believe any of this, and I have sought to correct these misperceptions, which could have fatal consequences.
我最近邀请了几名芝加哥警察到我的社区中心“项目头巾”（Project H.O.O.D.）做客。他们穿着芝加哥蓝色的全套警服，戴着带有格纹饰边的警帽，还佩戴着枪支。起初，房间里气氛紧张，你能感觉到。有些孩子躲在大人身后，而有些大人则挺身而出，态度挑衅。鸿沟非常深，这就是我邀请警察前来的原因，我想尽自己的一份力，一次又一次地修复“削减警察经费”运动造成的损害。
I recently invited several Chicago police officers to visit my community center, Project H.O.O.D. They came in full Chicago blue uniforms, with their police visor caps with the checkered bands, and their guns. At first, there was tension in the room. You could feel it. Some of the kids hid behind the adults, some of whom stood defiantly. The gulf was profound, and that is why I invited the police in to do my part to repair the damage done by the Defund the Police movement, one encounter at a time.
这种损害由来已久，对我们大多数年轻人来说，几乎是一辈子的时间，他们只知道对警察的敌意。十多年来，黑人的命也是命及其盟友一直在塑造一代人，让他们把警察视为问题所在。黑人社区对警察的恐惧和仇恨，某种程度上一直存在。
This damage goes back years, a lifetime for most of our youth who know nothing but hostility to the police. For more than a decade, Black Lives Matter and its allies conditioned a generation to treat the police as the problem. Fear and hatred of the police had always been there to some degree in the Black community.
但这种塑造有所不同，它始于2012年特雷沃恩·马丁之死之后开始兴起。当乔治·齐默尔曼被宣判无罪时，“黑人的命也是命”这一短语应运而生，开始传播的信息是警察在猎杀黑人男孩。齐默尔曼并非警察，但为了叙事需要，他被塑造成了那个社区自警者的替代角色。
But there was something different about this conditioning, which began to take off after Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012. When George Zimmerman was acquitted, the phrase "Black Lives Matter" was born, and the message that began to spread was that the police were hunting Black boys. Zimmerman was not a police officer, but for the sake of the narrative, he was made the stand-in as the neighborhood vigilante.
2014年迈克尔·布朗在弗格森的死亡进一步强化了这一叙事。“举起手来，别开枪”成为了一句并不真实的口号。布朗并没有举起双手——相反，他冲向了那名警察，但一名白人警察和一名死去的黑人少年的形象，足以让这一叙事延续下去。全美警察被妖魔化为占领军，而非佩戴徽章的邻居。
Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson in 2014 only reinforced the narrative. "Hands up, don’t shoot" became a slogan that was not true. Brown did not have his hands up — instead, he charged the cop, but the image of a White cop and a dead Black teen was all the narrative needed to continue. Police officers nationwide were demonized as an occupying force rather than neighbors with badges.
等到2020年乔治·弗洛伊德在明尼阿波利斯死亡时，基础已经打好。《纽约时报》发表了5月30日的评论文章《不再给警察拨款》，认为通往安全的道路是削减警察权力和与公众的接触，并将资金转移他处。在明尼阿波利斯，市议会大多数成员站在公园里，承诺解散警察局。声音最大的人不是在要求更好的培训或更多的问责。他们想要的是废除。
By the time George Floyd died in Minneapolis in 2020, the groundwork had already been laid. The New York Times published its May 30 opinion piece titled "No More Money for the Police," arguing that the path to safety was to reduce police power and contact with the public and redirect the money elsewhere. In Minneapolis, a majority of the City Council stood in a park and pledged to dismantle the police department. The loudest voices were not asking for better training or more accountability. They wanted abolition.
当我听到这些时，我知道一件事：代价将由我们来付。不是那些住在绿树成荫的郊区、前院插着“黑人的命也是命”标语的人。影响立竿见影。没有警察愿意冒着在网上疯传的风险。他们退缩了。可耻的是，我社区里的许多人还要求他们这么做。
When I heard that, I knew one thing: it would be us who paid the price. Not the folks living in leafy suburbs with Black Lives Matter signs in their front yards. And the impact was felt immediately. No police officer wanted to risk going viral. They pulled back. And, shamefully, many in my community demanded that.
2019年，芝加哥记录了约500起谋杀案。2020年，这一数字攀升至781起。2021年，达到804起——这是该城市25年来最致命的一年。激增是全国性的——联邦调查局数据显示，2020年谋杀案激增近30%，为有记录以来最大单年涨幅，黑人美国人受害更重。芝加哥南区和西区承担了不成比例的份额。随着退休和辞职激增，警力下降。在休假被取消、被迫加班、以及不断传递出这份工作本身不合法的信息下，士气崩溃。逮捕和主动执法减少。结果不是政策实验。承担不起代价的社区迎来了更多葬礼。
In 2019, Chicago recorded roughly 500 homicides. In 2020, that number climbed to 781. In 2021, it reached 804—the city’s deadliest year in a quarter-century. The spike was national—FBI data showed murders rose nearly 30 percent in 2020, the largest single-year increase on record, with Black Americans hit even harder. Chicago’s South and West Sides absorbed a disproportionate share. Police staffing fell as retirements and resignations surged. Morale collapsed under canceled days off, forced overtime, and the constant message that the job itself was illegitimate. Arrests and proactive policing dropped. The outcome was not a policy experiment. There were more funerals in the neighborhoods that could least afford them.
在这段时间里丧生的人中，有太多人本应该活下来。他们的死亡，是因为那些黑人民权活动家为了推动自己的政治议程而将警察妖魔化；这种行为反而导致了他们本应帮助的民众的毁灭。直到今天，还没有任何人为自己的那些致命言论承担过责任。
So many of those who died during this time should be alive. They died because Black activists demonized the police to advance their own activist agendas, which led to the very destruction of the people they claimed to be helping. To date, none have taken responsibility for their deadly rhetoric.
对于那些已经离世的人，我无能为力。我的关注点始终放在活着的人身上，尤其是那些年轻人。他们才是真正正在承受后果的人。多年来，他们一直被灌输“警察是敌人”的观念，这让他们中的某些人在遇到危险时选择不寻求帮助。每当看到警察制服，他们只会想到敌意，而不会想到救援。这种恐惧已经深深扎根在那些已经失去太多东西的孩子们心中。
There is nothing I can do about the dead. My focus has been on the living, especially the young minds. They are the ones still paying the price. Years of being told that the police are the enemy taught some of them never to call when something bad is happening. They see the uniform and assume hostility rather than help. I have watched that fear take root in kids who have already lost too much.
这就是“削减警察经费”政策所带来的持久伤害之一：不仅街道上的警察人数减少了，更有一整代人因此学会了“那些本应保护他们的人是不可信任的”。
It is one of the lasting wounds of the defund era: not only fewer officers on the street, but a generation that learned the people sworn to protect them cannot be trusted.
在“H.O.O.D.项目”中，我们正用自己唯一知道的方式来修复这种伤害——我们让警察走进我们的机构，让孩子们能够将他们视为普通人。警察们会和孩子们、青少年以及来到这里的成年人坐在一起，回答他们的问题，倾听他们讲述的故事。他们让孩子们明白：制服并不能掩盖一个真正的“怪物”；制服下其实是一个选择了这份艰巨工作、只为保护这个社区安全的普通人。
At Project H.O.O.D., we are repairing that damage the only way I know how—by bringing the police into our building and letting our kids see them as people. Officers come in and sit with the children, the teenagers, and the adults who walk through our doors. They answer questions. They listen to the stories that our young people carry. They show that the uniform does not hide a monster; it covers a man or woman who chose a hard job because they want to keep this community safe.
那些曾经一看到警车就吓得不敢说话的孩子们，现在会主动留下来继续交流；甚至还有一些孩子开始询问自己该如何成为一名警察。
Some of the kids who used to freeze up at the sight of a squad car now stay after and keep talking. A few have even started asking what it takes to become an officer themselves.
恐惧不会在短短一个下午内消失，但至少这种隔阂已经开始被打破。这就是我们的工作意义所在。这既不是一场新闻发布会，也不是一句口号；而是我们在机构里一次又一次进行的对话——我们坚决不让过去十年的谎言成为未来的现实。
The fear does not disappear in a single afternoon, but the wall starts to crack. That is the work. It is not a press conference. It is not a slogan. It is one conversation at a time inside a building where we refuse to let the lies of the last decade become the future of the next one.
警察并不是敌人。将他们视为敌人，已经让太多人在街头失去了生命。我们不能再继续接受这种错误的观念了。
The police are not the enemy. Treating them as if they are has already cost too many lives on these streets. We are done accepting that.